


Where You Are, I Will Be (Miles High, In the Deep)

by hearteyedheda



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angel!Lexa, Angst, Character Death, Clexa, F/F, Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Ending, I promise it will all be okay in the end, I'm not a complete monster, Just Bear With Me, Lexa dies but then she lives, Modern AU, it will be worth it, it won't be sad the whole time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-06-16 21:52:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15446649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearteyedheda/pseuds/hearteyedheda
Summary: Clarke and Lexa are deeply in love and have finally moved in together. What will happen when an unexpected consequence of a victory in Lexa's career tears them apart?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am still so heartbroken over Lexa's death, so I guess this is my way of coping two years later.  
> Bonus points to whoever knows what the title's from ;)  
> I plan on updating every other week, but may have to take a break if school and work drain me too much.

Moving days were stressful days for Lexa.

Starting as early as she could remember, moving into new homes occurred yearly - even monthly, during rough times. Arkadia’s foster system failed her horribly, packing her up and shipping her across town more frequently than could have possibly been healthy for a young child. Indra Woods ended up being her final stop, the one who crossed the T’s and dotted the I’s to adopt the (at that point) 13 year old introvert, and happily obliged when Lexa asked for her last name to be changed to Woods at age 17.

She had Indra to thank for her ferocity, often undertoned until something threatened to block her path. It was that ferocity that contributed to her success as a criminal justice lawyer.

But she also attributed to Indra her stance on social justice, which ultimately led her away from her initial career as a police officer. Indra just about went on a rampage when Lexa announced she put in her two weeks notice, but quickly settled with pride when Lexa’s defense of “I didn’t want to perpetuate racial profiling to meet my quota” surfaced.

Indra swelled with just as much pride as she carried in the last box for Lexa and her girlfriend Clarke’s new apartment. Her daughter’s jittery disposition had an entirely positive air about it, a stark contrast from the day she first set foot in Indra’s home 13 years ago.

 “Look at you,” the older woman beamed, arms out to hug Lexa. “I’m so happy for you. When will Clarke be here?”

 Lexa was pleasantly surprised. Though supportive, Indra wasn’t one to be so… outwardly upbeat. Lexa pulled her phone from her pocket to check the time. “Her shift ends in six hours.”

 “Well then we’d better start unpacking!”

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke could hardly contain her excitement, somehow energized at the end of her 16-hour shift at Arkadia Memorial Hospital. She and Lexa barely saw each other in the last couple weeks; Clarke worked shift after shift, while Lexa pored over every last detail of her current case for the upcoming court date. But tonight would be different. Tonight, Lexa promised to set work aside in favor of unpacking their new home (and breaking in their brand new bed). Clarke didn’t work until tomorrow around noon, and she planned on spending every moment with Lexa before the brunette had to leave for the courthouse at 10:30 in the morning. Lexa almost certainly would be home before her, seeing as her shift wasn’t supposed to end until 10 that night. Oh, how she looked forward to continuing what she and Lexa surely wouldn’t be able to finish that morning.

 Clarke dropped her bag in the doorway, amazed. The living room was spotless. The furniture was arranged the way she described she wanted it to Lexa, complete with a shelved table against the wall beside the couch, covered with framed photos of the two of them, Clarke’s father, and a Polaroid of the night Indra met Clarke’s mother, Abby.

“Is it okay?” Lexa walked down the hallway, still in a sweaty tank top and shorts.

“Lex, it’s perfect!” Clarke jumped into her arms, giggling when Lexa reflexively held her girlfriend up by her thighs.

 Lexa kissed her tenderly, ecstatic to see Clarke so joyful. “You won’t believe what I found, too.” She carried Clarke back to their room, the second door on the right in the hallway, and set her down in the swivel chair in front of their computer desk. “I checked the smaller boxes from storage to see if there was anything we’d need, and…” She clicked on iTunes and pulled up the Recently Added playlist. “I found the CD from the day we met. It was a bit scratched, the computer couldn’t read it, so I bought it on here for us.”

 Clarke teared up. She remembered that day perfectly: the band playing outside the record store, the music, everything. Raven and Octavia urged her to go with them to see this local band called Lovebird, and Clarke tried to weasel her way out of it before the two girls physically dragged her to Raven’s car. In that moment she was livid, but now she couldn’t be more grateful. Nothing could have prepared her for how hard she would fall for the woman who reached for the last CD at the same time she did, then offered to buy it for her under the condition that they listened to it together.

 Five years later, here they are.

 Clarke’s voice wavered, and she smiled. “I still remember your favorite songs. Relic and There Is A Light, right?”

 Lexa chuckled and settled in Clarke’s lap. “For some reason, ‘Relic’ and ‘Ending of Control’ are mixed up, so you have to play the opposite to hear what you want.” She clicked Ending of Control, and the dreamy keyboard notes of Relic filled the room as the women kissed.

 

\---

 

Lexa thanked her lucky stars for having the foresight to just buy frozen pizzas for dinner. She figured they’d both be too tired to actually cook anything after both their hard day’s work, but being far too spent after several hours of sex “just to make sure the bed is broken in” wasn’t such a bad reason either. She was so tired she couldn’t even bring herself to express her routine disgust with Clarke’s usual barbecue chicken pizza.

 And it didn’t go unnoticed. “Not even a funny face?” Clarke asked as she bit into her first piece. “Am I that good?”

 Lexa sighed blissfully, closed her eyes, and leaned back into the couch, her own two slices of vegetable pizza untouched. “I’ll get around to it tomorrow when you eat the leftovers.”

 “Who said there would be leftovers?” Clarke smirked. “It’s gonna take a lot more than two slices to refuel after _that_.”

 Lexa opened an eye, her expression smug. “Then it looks like I’ll have to share mine after round two.”

 

\---

 

Any other day, Lexa would have so many regrets about staying up until 5 in the morning when she had to get up at 8, but the night before was exactly what she needed. After proving to Clarke just how much she’d missed her, the blonde allowed Lexa to watch her work on painting her portrait of the brunette. How Clarke managed to make it so realistic even in its unfinished state, she’d never know.

  _As if the painting wasn’t already an amazing gift in itself, Clarke - at 3 in the morning -  presented her with something just as beautiful._

_Confused, Lexa had asked Clarke where she was going when she stared deep into green eyes and abruptly stood to head over to the guest room across the hall (though at that point it may as well have just been a storage room). The younger woman returned with an old velvet jewelry case, which had clearly seen better days._

  _“Clarke?”_

  _With tears in her eyes and a smile on her lips, Clarke opened the box to reveal an antique compass, recently cleaned and polished. “My dad wanted to give this to you. He was waiting for the right time, but-” she choked up._

  _“Baby, it’s okay,” Lexa pulled her down onto the bed and held her._

  _Clarke nuzzled into her and, with a few deep breaths, continued, “He wanted to give it to you, but when he was in the hospital he told me about it, and asked if I would. He said I’d know when the time was right.” She laughed through a sob. “Only took me three years.”_

  _Astounded, Lexa cradled the compass in her hand. Clarke never, ever talked about her father. Lexa knew better than to think Clarke never thought of him, but time after time Clarke refused to engage in conversation about him, even going so far as to abandon any conversation altogether for hours at a time. “It’s beautiful, Clarke.”_

  _“My mom got it from her father, and she gave it to my father. And now he’s giving it to you. Here…” Clarke, whose hands finally stopped trembling, gently turned the compass over in Lexa’s hand, revealing a quote engraved on the back._

 

**_Where you are, I will be: miles high, in the deep._ **

 

_Up until then, Lexa held it together for Clarke, but the sentiment behind the quote on the back broke the dam. She pulled her girlfriend closer and kissed her forehead. “I love you. Thank you.”_

  _“I love you, too.”_

  _“Clarke, if anything should happen to me-”_

  _Clarke shook her head vehemently. “No, don’t say that-”_

  _“Please, babe,” Lexa set the compass down in its case so she could hold Clarke’s face with both hands. “If anything happens to me, this compass is yours. You know why?”_

  _Clarke turned her head to kiss Lexa’s palms, and stared up into her girlfriend’s eyes, unable to speak._

  _“Because where you are, I will be. Always. I love you, I could never bear the thought of leaving you.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said I'd update every other week but it turns out I'm bad at self-discipline and can't get my shit together sdljhfsfsdkj  
> I don't quite like this chapter the way it is, but if I try to edit it now it'll be another month before I post it, so here it is! I'll probably edit a bit later.   
> I wish I could say I'll be updating frequently and consistently but I don't want to make a promise I can't keep, so I'll just say I WANT to update consistently/frequently but most likely won't be able to.

**_Lexa_ **

The high from her court victory added extra pep to Lexa’s usually solemn gait.

Not that victory was unusual for her - far from it. However, this time around, she wasn’t defending some 40-year-old imprisoned for possession of marijuana. This time around, she ensured the safety of a group of teenagers trapped under a drug lord’s thumb.

From the very beginning she knew if she had anything to do with it, Wyatt Rivers would rot in prison.

And now he would.

A young man who went by “Beaver” stepped up for his group of friends, though Lexa had been involved with law enforcement long enough to know it wasn’t just his gangly flock caught up in the ring.

Still ever so formal, Lexa patted Beaver’s shoulder as they walked side-by-side from the courthouse to the parking lot. “You won’t have to see him ever again, Beaver.”

“Thank you, Ms. Woods.” The young man smiled sheepishly at the woman beside him. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

Forgoing her stiff lawyer demeanor, Lexa wrapped an arm around his shoulders in a side-hug.

“Legally, I can’t tell you exactly how long I’ve been trying to throw his ass in prison. But we finally did it.”

Beaver inhaled to respond, but froze in place as a black Camaro with tinted windows hurriedly turned into the parking lot, tires squealing against the asphalt.

Lexa’s police training overrode her instinct to just bolt, but when one of the windows cracked open enough for the barrel of a gun to stick out, her protective instincts overrode her police training.

In the blink of an eye, Lexa pivoted to become a barrier between Beaver and the car. One sharp _bang_ and a searing ache rippled from the back of her ribcage to her chest.

She smelled burning rubber and heard the tires peeling off just as quickly as they came.

The actual, overpowering pain didn’t claim her until her body hit the pavement, rigid in agony.

Beaver appeared to shift into autopilot as he dropped to his knees and pulled a phone from the pocket of his blood-speckled slacks.

Lexa faded in and out, the stampede of people approaching from the courthouse her last sight.

 

Nothing.

She was conscious, yet she felt nothing.

Lexa only heard and thought; she could not feel, she could not see, she could not speak.

Now that she thought about it, she could not breathe, either.

But her lungs didn’t burn and her head didn’t ache.

Fighting against her own eyelids reminded her of the single time she experienced sleep paralysis.

Murmuring all around. Crying? Two muffled male voices, very close. Radio crackle.

“We’ve got the order from Arkadia. T.O.D. 2:37 p.m.”

Finally, Lexa’s eyes shot open.

The surrounding voices now reached her crystal-clear, many of them devolving into soft sobs.

She sat up and examined the humans huddled around her, the circle broken only by an open ambulance.

“What’s-” Lexa cut herself off at the sound of her own voice. It...wasn’t right. It wasn’t coming from her throat - it was coming from her mouth, and she didn’t even take a breath to speak. She steadied herself to study it as she tried again. “What’s going on?”

One of the paramedics stepped up into the vehicle and returned with a large sheet.

Confused, Lexa shook her head. “I don’t need-”

And it fluttered right through her as the paramedic laid it down.

It all came rushing back. She was in the parking lot outside the courthouse, she’d just led the jury to convict Wyatt Rivers. She congratulated Beaver.

 _The car_. One of Wyatt’s goons, surely.

But she couldn’t be dead… right?

The only thing grounding her from floating off into denial was the odd fact that instead of her pantsuit, she now wore her favorite outfit: a plain white t-shirt, ripped jeans, and combat boots, with her hair in interconnected braids.

More gracefully than expected, she launched herself upwards and spun around to observe the sheet below. She both recognized and could not fathom the shape of the body beneath. She bent over to lift the fabric, to confirm it really was her, but couldn’t seem to get a grip on the linen.

“What the fuck!” she yelled, and cried out once more when nobody turned toward her screams.

Panic dug its claws deep into her mind. She couldn’t hyperventilate or pass out - at least that would’ve been relief from this new hell.

The paramedics gently requested the onlookers to leave, and asked Beaver to wait for the police.

“He’s just a kid!” Lexa shouted, trying and failing to grab one of the men by the shoulder.

The anxiety of it all crashed into her more violently than the bullet, cutting her down to her knees, palms flat against the ground.

Her eyes fixed on the asphalt beneath her until they shifted out of focus, and back again when what appeared to be a firefly floated up toward her face and away to draw her attention forward. Hundreds more of them drifted around, never bumping into each other. Several of them circled Lexa, urging her toward the mass of lights.

She couldn’t find it in herself to refuse their direction. They radiated comfort and good intentions, blanketing Lexa in the serenity she’d heard stories about on TV from people who’d been miraculously revived.

The little glowing lights lined up and arched into a passageway. As Lexa ventured further and further into the corridor, the world around her began to fade into darkness and the glowing specks loosened in structure.

Panic struck for a brief moment, elevating the urge to run back, but the soothing lights returned to hush the screaming of her conscience and propel her forward.

And she was glad they did. The pitch black atmosphere beyond the lights gradually developed into (still lightless) colors nonexistent on Earth. None of the words for colors she’d learned throughout life described the shades and hues swirling as slowly as clouds along this new sky.

Somehow, the colors were even more beautiful in the rippling floor beneath her shoes, which appeared to be water yet left no moisture when Lexa dragged her fingers across the surface.

“Welcome.”

Lexa whipped around at the new voice, searching for its owner.

No owner - just ‘fireflies,’ water, and colors.

It spoke again, clear as day with no discernible source. “You are safe.”

She couldn’t quite pin it: was this a man? Woman? Alien? “Who are you?”

“In your language, I am God.”

Impossible. “What’s _your_ language?”

“All of them.”

Carefully, to avoid offense, Lexa asked, “You exist?”

“Do I?”

Lexa sighed, bordering petulant. The last thing she needed was an assortment of riddles and indeterminate responses. “ _If_ you do, why is the world...the way it is?”

“I am a parent to humanity. It is no longer a child, it must make and learn from its own mistakes.”

“And what if it goes extinct?”

“There are plenty more populations to oversee.”

Lexa mulled it over, briefly reconsidering her stance on alien life. At least she learned _something._

“Do you hate anyone?”

The being let loose a charmed laugh. “Do not insult me.”

Lexa looked all around with a confused half-smile and knitted brows. Though vague and mysterious, this God didn’t seem _too_ bad (not as bad as she thought mere seconds ago) - not nearly as bad as some of the people who claimed to represent...them? All her life she’d only ever heard of God referred to as ‘He.’ _Better to be polite_ , she figured. “What are your pronouns?”

A boisterous, but genuine laugh. “Whatever you wish.”

She nodded (assuming this being could _see_ her nod - but who was she kidding?). Despite the vague satisfaction from the change in her own attitude, Lexa deflated and geared up to ask the most monumental question possible:

“I’m really dead, aren’t I?”

Without verbal confirmation, Lexa virtually felt a ‘yes’ and the nod that would have accompanied it, had God presented as a physical being.

“There’s no going back?”

“Rarely.”

Lexa faltered, completely shocked. “ _Rarely_ ? You mean it _happens_?”

The colors, the water, the lights, _everything_ dissolved to pitch black, and pitch black lightened into familiar surroundings.

In front of her, on a black shelf, sat framed photos of herself and Clarke, along with photos of Clarke’s father.

A new portrait of herself hung on the wall behind the frames. Well, new to the living room - Lexa watched Clarke slave over it for weeks, working little by little just a few minutes at a time in hopes of finishing it by Christmas. Yet here it was, done and hung.

How long had she been gone?

 

* * *

 

 

**_Clarke_ **

 

“Worried” would be an understatement of how Clarke felt.

The concerned stares and avoidance of eye contact from the other nurses and doctors drummed up an uneasiness she couldn’t shake. She wondered if she was on the road to being fired… which wouldn’t make sense, given she’d never broken procedure and all her patients seemed to love her.

She headed for the break room to take a breather and pull herself together. After all, nerves create mistakes.

Worry twisted into panic when Dr. Abby Griffin approached, tears in her eyes and an attempt at a steeled expression gone awry. “Honey, come here,” she led Clarke by the elbow to an on-call room, and lowered her onto the cot. She kneeled in front of her daughter. “Clarke, I need you to remember to breathe right now, okay?”

“Mom…” Clarke gazed into her mother’s eyes, searching for an immediate answer. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Abby clasped one of Clarke’s hands between her own and squeezed weakly. “I’ll start by telling you that we both have the rest of the day off, and Kane’s giving you as much time off as you need.”

No… she knew this speech. She knew the implications of sudden complete schedule flexibility, though the few people Marcus Kane allowed it for never needed to use it… except her mom. When her father died.

Abby watched the beginnings of realization dawn upon her daughter, but its momentum appeared to screech to a halt as Clarke focused more urgently on her mother. Abby paused, allowing a moment for Clarke to come to the conclusion on her own, but years and years as a doctor fostered her skill of detecting denial. “Lexa was shot outside the courthouse. It happened too fast, Murphy and Kyle couldn’t have been there soon enough.”

The room closed in on Clarke. Legitimately momentarily blinded by panic, Clarke clutched at her mother’s hands as she shook her head. “No, no- mom, this was her big case she- I can’t-”

“Shh shh shh, breathe, Clarke,” Abby sat beside the quaking blonde and hugged her close, rocking her gently side to side as she did when Clarke was younger. “Let’s go home, okay? I’ll make all the calls, you do what you need to do.”

Clarke ended up locking herself in the guest room with nothing but paint and her unfinished piece, refusing to open the door to her concerned mother until she completed the painting nine hours later.

She wished she hadn’t opened that door. She wished she’d just curled up and gone to sleep. Anything would have been better than all her breath rushing from her lungs at the sight of Lexa’s compass transferred to her hands from Abby’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't help the Thumper references, it was just too good.


	3. Chapter 3

**_Lexa_ **

 

Lexa growled in exasperation. Picking up a pen really shouldn’t have been so hard.

  
She focused on her fingers, remembered how the pen felt on her skin in life. Slipped through again.

   
“Damn it!”

   
Once again, her shouts of anger reached her ears only. She’d raged around the apartment several times within the past week and Clarke never noticed. Neither did Abby, who’d moved into the guest room shortly after what Lexa knew was the worst day of her existence.

   
“As if being dead isn’t bad enough,” Lexa grumbled to herself, begrudgingly accepting the fact that the pen was a lost cause, along with paint brushes, pencils, chalk…

   
Lexa sulked down the hall to her- _Clarke’s_ room and sat on the bed (which pissed her off to no end every time - ‘ _seriously? I can sit on beds and couches but can’t pick up a god damned pen?_ ’).

   
Clarke sat at the edge of the bed, staring vacantly at the black clothes hanging from the dresser’s knobs.

   
Lexa moved beside her, not even dipping the mattress beneath her. The expression on Clarke’s face rarely shifted in the last seven days, only ever slipping into one of pure agony when something triggered another crying spell.  


Lexa could not cry. She sobbed and wailed often, but had yet to see or feel an actual tear.

   
There’d been a moment or two where she convinced herself all her tears were going to Clarke.

   
The compass hung around Clarke’s neck on a slim chain, and rested at her heart’s level. The blonde clutched at it frequently, seemingly worried it suddenly disappeared and she hadn’t noticed. It broke Lexa down every time. She instinctually placed her hand over Clarke’s, but always pulled back hastily when the compass needle whirred wildly.

   
Apparently Clarke had grown accustomed to the bizarre phenomenon; she unclasped the chain and held up the compass, inspecting it, expecting its unruly behavior.

   
“You’ve been noticing that, huh?” Lexa murmured, idly passing her fingers over and through both the compass and Clarke’s hand, causing the instrument to thrum with activity intermittently.

   
Clarke sighed and put the necklace back on before getting up and changing into the black blouse and midi skirt.

   
As the funeral time approached, Lexa followed Abby and Clarke out to the car. She reached out to stroke Clarke’s hair, out of habit, but dropped her hand drearily when it failed to contact the blonde locks.

   
“I do love you,” she whispered, dreadfully aware the love of both her life and death couldn’t hear her.

 

* * *

 

 

**_Clarke_ **

 

As much as Clarke wished she could laugh along with everyone else at Bellamy’s story about one of his and Lexa’s wild nights out, any change in her breathing from the deep, controlled lungfuls of air she focused on resulted in crying.

   
Maybe she would have fit right in, though, seeing as half the people in the room were wiping at tears of laughter when Bellamy reached the climax of the story, bringing it to life with the movement and voice changes he did so well. It was a story of Lexa’s character, her personality… it reminded everyone that this service actually was a celebration of life alongside mourning the loss of a loved one, that it was okay to cry and then laugh. Aside from the circumstances of the gathering, the overall message and atmosphere would have made Lexa proud of every person in that room, and Clarke knew this very well.

   
And that’s what allowed her to chuckle when Jasper told the story of the time Lexa threw a pencil at him and the point stuck in his chest.

   
Clarke assumed the minute rumbling in her chest was from her uncontrollable laughter as Raven told her story about ‘accidentally’ setting Lexa’s bed on fire with all her candles (and making subsequent jokes about Lexa and Clarke’s sex life), but it continued on when she paused to catch her breath. She lifted the compass from her skin and, sure enough, it thrummed with the speed of the needle spinning at top speed.

 

* * *

 

 

**_Lexa_ **

 

Lexa almost hated herself for feeling grateful. She should’ve been sad at the very least, but how could she be? Hundreds of people attended her funeral, and so many of them lined up to share their stories that they had to move the rest of them to the reception at her friends’ house.

  
Several of the speakers surprised her; she hadn’t realized those moments left a lasting impression.

  
There it was: the grief. Those stories and memories existed only in the past, and new ones would never be made.

  
Walking along the lively streets downtown prevented Lexa from spiraling. She quickly learned she no longer needed to squeeze past pedestrians and jump out of the way of approaching bicycles. It seemed pointless, really. Passing through people and objects removed the added focus, and made distraction that much more difficult. Maybe counting the people she stepped through would help…

1..

2, 3, 4…

5-

Lexa collided with another body and fell to the sidewalk. The other woman wobbled on her feet as she steadied herself.

  
“You okay?”

  
Lexa nodded and rose, eyes wide. “Are you dead?”

  
“Thanks, I’m fine, too,” the taller, ombre-haired woman snarked playfully. “You must be new, you look like you just saw a ghost.”

  
Lexa floundered, at a loss for words, and the stranger laughed heartily.

  
“I’m Anya.” She held her hand out.

  
Lexa shook her hand, thrilled to actually feel another being. “Lexa.”

  
“When did you join the party?” Anya motioned for Lexa to walk beside her, headed toward an intersecting street that led to the pier.

  
“Little less than a week ago, I think. Feels like I was only in space for an hour, but my girlfriend’s calendar-”

  
Anya snickered. “In space? Was God there?”

  
“Yes…” Lexa glanced over, confused at the interruption.

  
“Most of us call that the Cosmic Place,” she shrugged at the questioning gaze. “I can see why you’d think it was space. Go on.”

  
“Oh.” Lexa observed tiny spots of rain scattering across the sidewalk and street. “Well yeah, anyway, it felt like I was only there for an hour but according to my girlfriend’s calendar, I was there for six days.”

  
“Happens,” Anya replied, noncommittal.

  
Lexa sunk into a state of agitation as the raindrops grew in size and landed more consistently, never making contact with her body. She was practically seething by the time they reached the end of the pier.

  
Anya studied the tense woman. “What’s got you so sour?”

  
“This is so stupid. I can’t feel rain, I can’t pick up a pen, but I can sit in a car and on a couch?” Lexa grumbled and scowled, not knowing where to direct it. She settled on glaring up at the thick clouds blanching the city. “I don’t get it. I want a manual, like in Beetlejuice, but I’m not getting one.”

  
Anya chuckled. “Yeah, well, God’s kind of an asshole.”

  
No more than a second passed between Anya’s statement and a flash of lightning, accompanied immediately by thunder. “I’m kidding!” she yelled. “Damn, so _testy_.”


End file.
